A heartbroken lover hung around the home of his ex-partner for two months, drinking himself to death outside her block of flats in Southcote.

Nicholas Harrison-Longmate, 36, of Caversham Place, Richfield Avenue, died from alcohol poisoning on July 29, outside the flats in Granville Road where Kerry Buchanan lived.

DC James Faulkner told an inquest into his death last Tuesday how Mr Harrison-Longmate had been in a relationship with Ms Buchanan for five years, but they split up two months earlier.

She had told the officer her ex-partner had hung around outside, putting letters and poems through her letterbox, getting into the block when someone else opened the security door and sleeping on her landing and on the balcony outside her flat.

The couple met in Prospect Park Hospital where Mr Harrison-Longmate was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Ms Buchanan described him as an alcoholic who appeared to be “drunk all the time” after they split up.

Mr Harrison-Longmate’s family questioned the suggestion he was an alcoholic and the coroner checking the GP records acknowledged alcohol abuse had not been mentioned, but said the pathologist found “fatty changes in his liver consistent with chronic alcoholism”.

Mr Harrison-Longmate was found face down next to bushes outside the flats with grazes on his face and scratches on his hands consistent with a fall.

CCTV showed him leaving the building shortly before his body was found.

In his rucksack, he had a full bottle and one three-quarter full bottle of vodka. Nearby was another empty bottle of the same brand.

A notebook in his bag contained poems which revealed he was depressed and upset.

Coroner Peter Bedford read texts from Mr Harrison-Longmate’s phone saying there were one or two “not very pleasant exchanges between Nicholas and so-called friends”.

On June 26, he texted Ms Buchanan “I don’t want to be alive any longer” and on July 18 he texted “How about the morgue then? You can ID my body”.

On the day of his death, according to the coroner there were a “raft of texts” starting at 4.53am saying: “I will die if he is with you.”

At 3.17pm, he texted: “Don’t you want to see my ugly face one last time?”

The last text at 5.38pm before he was declared dead at the scene at 7.32pm was: “You are all I ever loved. I love you with all my heart.”

The coroner said these indicated he had often threatened suicide, but not carried it through.

A toxicology report by Andrew Love found 352mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood. Anything between 350 and 400mgs was “generally considered a fatal amount”.

Mr Bedford said he was struggling to accept Mr Harrison-Longmate had “deliberately decided to drink as much as he can to end his life”.

Relationships break up, he said, but “Nicholas’s reaction was extreme, he could not accept it”.

Recording a verdict of misadventure, he said: “He used alcohol as a crutch to support him to a point where that level of alcohol had become so high that he lay collapsed and tragically died.”

Mother: ‘It became too much to bear’

In a statement from the family Nicholas’s mother Susan Harrison- Longmate said: “He died trying to rekindle a lost love.

“He had become besotted with his ex-girlfriend and wanted to marry and start a family. Sadly this never happened and he leaves a heartbroken family to struggle with the tragic loss. We knew he found happiness until recently and now hope he has found peace.”

She said she did not think he set out to end his life – “I just think it all became just too much to bear that day”.